GLL Sample Chapter

God Loves Laughter

 

The Haldimand community has been holding feasts in Edgewater Gardens, a local retirement home, in order that an aged Baha'i couple can attend. Because of their move here from Port Colbourne, they have been downsizing their library and donating some of their books to the local Baha'i library. Since I am the librarian, I get to handle them first. Some of the books we have found quite suitable for our little daily Baha'i class. We go through a surprising number of books, reading just a few pages or chapters each day. At the last feast they donated a children's prayer book and "God Loves Laughter" by William Sears. The latter is a very old copy that came out in 1960, undoubtedly the first edition. Here is the blurb on the jacket:

"This is the hilarious story of a poor boy from the Middle West who became one of America's top-flight TV stars. But he was bothered with a hoyhood dream and eventually left the big time to go to Nineveh. (Like Jonah!)*

"Through all the laughter -- and it is uproarious at times -- there is an underlying serious note, and the fact that his dream dream came true and brought him long-sought spiritual assurance is a considerable satisfaction to the rcader.

*"Better read the book; the author says he has explained this." -Ed.

Although we are already reading a novel, I thought I would start right away on this book. I introduced it by saying that this is probably the funniest of all Baha'i books, and that a few non-studious friends I have known lived all their Baha'i lives having read this book only. That is it, nothing else, just "God Loves Laughter." Anyway, I showed them the frontspiece photograph of Bill Sears with his menagerie of stuffed animals that he had on his kids' television show, "In the Park", and launched into it.

I must say, my expectations were not high. I read GLL when I first became a Baha'i and enjoyed it immensely. Then, maybe fifteen years later I read it again and was not impressed. Maybe I was in a bad way at the time, but it seemed dreary and depressing, even a little embarrassing. 

But I was not prepared for the kids' reaction to it last night. 

I have never read anything to them that they reacted to so uproariously. They laughed so loud that they drowned me out. I had to stop every few lines for them to quiet down. Talk about laugh a minute, this was a laugh every three or four seconds. The consternation of this Irish Catholic father at having a son whose first word is "God" struck them as absolutely hilarious. And the song his father sang with his drinking buddy! My ears were ringing afterwards they bellowed so loud.

In view of that glowing recommendation, I thought I would give you a chance to judge for yourself how funny this book is. I had to get my scanner installed anyway, so I tested it out this morning by scanning in the first chapter. Consider it a sample chapter, like you find in a magazine. 

As I was proofreading the chapter just now, I was aware that Sears was born just when the Master was about to be leaving Egypt for Europe and America. The time of his dream, though unknown by Sears himself, may have coincided with the Master's travelling nearby where he lived. 

GLL is truly Bill Sears chef d'oeuvre, and it reminds me of how urgently, desperately, intensely we need more humor and light reading on the Baha'i bookshelf. Yes, spirituality is what the Cause is all about, but laughter is surely a step in that direction. For every weighty tome being bought and read by serious readers today, there are probably a dozen or two non-scholarly types eager for something funny, for a little light recreational reading. God willing, a talented humorist with a wit like Mr. Sears, our revered and everybody's favorite Hand of the Cause, is entering the faith right now and we will be able to enjoy more books like GLL soon.

God Loves Laughter, by Bill Sears

Chapter One: A SEVENTH SON-OF-A-GUN OF A SEVENTH SON-OF-A-GUN

I WAS BORN in a caul. Wrapped "in a veil" my Irish father bragged. My Uncle Duffy was more picturesque.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and all the saints in purgatory! The laddie's come in a cocoon!"

The midwife was the first to rush the news to my father. "It's a genius that's born to you," she cried, "all wrapped up like the seventh son of a seventh son."

"Never mind that," Father told her. "Is it a boy genius or a girl genius?"

"A big boy-child, and the finger of God is on him."

I was born on March 28, 1911, in Duluth, Minnesota, in Pumpkin Row. My father never quite forgave me for missing St. Patrick's Day by less than two weeks. As a news event, I was a poor second to the storm that blew in off Lake Superior with hailstones as big as golf balls.

My father's family originally came from Court MacSherry Bay at the foot of County Cork. On a Saturday night Father would stand for hours around the piano at Hennessy's house with the only other two Irishmen in town and they would sing one short song over and over:

"O000h ... McGinty was dead and McCarthy didn't know it; McCarthy was dead and McGinty didn't know it; They both lay there dead in the very same bed And neither didn't know that the other was dead."

Then off they'd go into gales of laughter, then back to the song, then off they'd go again. Only this time it was to McMurtry's pub.

Mother, who was French, Spanish, German, Welsh, English, and Scotch, would often tell Father, especially when he had displeased her, which was almost daily, that St. Patrick had made one great mistake.

"He should have left the snakes," she said, "and driven Out the Irish."

Within a week after I was born, Father was spreading it all over town that he'd come into a great piece of fortune. "It's my son," he said. "He came in a caul, like a pea in a pod. It's a sign from heaven. He's bringing us great good luck, and in no time at all now, we'll be coming into a nice piece of money."

Mother was annoyed. "I know your whole family," she told Father, "both here and in Ireland, and you could keep all the money they own together in the toe of one boot."

"You've got no faith, woman. Just wait 'till the young lad begins to speak. He'll tell you."

I began to walk when I was ten months old, but I began to speak when I was only six months. It made my father very nervous. Especially since the first word I said was not "Daddy", but "God".

"The boy's creepy," he told Mother. "Where did he pick that up?"

"He didn't get anything as mild as that from you certainly," Mother told him.

"I don't like it. It's spooky. I don't know if he's swearing or prophesying."

By the time I was a year-and-a-half old, my father was quite frightened of me. I knew several words that he didn't. It was at this time that I first had the dream. When I told mother about my dream she told Father. He wanted to take me to a doctor, but Mother said, "He's just precocious."

"He's weird," Father told her, "and I'm not at all sure it was wise to have him. But there's no sending him back now."

Mother told me about these things in detail years later. All I could recall myself about the dream the first time I had it was that the room had been full of a wonderful bright light, that I was very happy, and that I wanted to remain there.

Mother said she remembered the day of my dream very clearly. It was the morning that Father came downstairs after being desperately ill. He'd eaten some string beans from a bad jar and had been poisoned. For three days he thought he was going to die. At the height of his fever he confessed to Mother that ten years ago when they had first been married he'd taken Alma Jensen to a barn dance, and he didn't want to die with that on his conscience. Unfortunately for him, he recovered. When he came downstairs he was openly cheerful. He hugged Mother and gave her a playful poke in the ribs.

"I hope you didn't pay any attention to my little ravings while I was hysterical with fever."

Mother dug him a good one in the ribs in return. She laughed coldly. "Of course not, Frank. I imagine I'll forget all about it in a few years."

That's how Mother came to remember so clearly the day of my dream. Women are funny that way. The date I had the first dream was September 20, 1912.

By the time I was five I was making my poor father's life a misery. I seemed to have an inordinate interest in God, and he didn't care to discuss it with me. One day at the circus, while the bare-back riders were galloping through the big rings of fire, I turned to Father and said suddenly, "Is that what hell is like ?"

Father nearly swallowed his cigar, it upset him so.

"Don't ask me," he said angrily, "I've lived all my life in Minnesota."

Since Father had opened the subject, I said, "Where does God live, Father ? How big is He? Does He have brown eyes?"

We left the tent immediately. Father stopped at a sideshow and bought me a rubber ball. "Here," he said patiently, "play ball. Be like the other little boys. Bounce the ball on the ground."

I did, obediently. Then I looked up at him proudly. "God made the ground," I informed him.

Father threw up his hands and took me home.

About a month later, according to Mother, I had the dream a second time. I didn't say anything about it until my father came home from work. I was a cock-horse and Father was riding me to Banbury Cross astraddle his toe when I told him.

"The man came again," I said.

"Who came?" Father laughed.

"The man."

"What man?"

"The man in light."

"Where?"

"In my dream again."

I got off before Banbury Cross. "Ethel?" Father called, "He's at it again."

Mother came hurrying in. "What's wrong ?"

Father was already putting on his coat. "He's seen that man in a light in his dream again."

Mother picked me up tenderly and kissed me. "Of course, he has." She hugged me to her. "We all have nasty bad dreams."

"It was a good dream," I told her.

"What did the man look like ?"

"I don't know."

"What did he say?"

"Don't follow in their footsteps."

Mother nearly dropped me. Father turned in the doorway.

"Thank God I work in an underground mine and don't have to come up until it's dark."

The very next morning Father was shaving when I came into the bathroom.

"What's my name ?" I asked him.

Father had often played this game with me. "Your name is William."

"Then why did he call me Peter ?"

"Who ?"

"The man in my dream last night."

Father cut his chin. "Ethel!"

Mother appeared from nowhere. She was very patient about it.

"Are you sure he called you Peter, dear ?"

I nodded. "He said: 'Fish like Peter."'

Father went to work that morning with his face half shaved. He told Mother to take me to a doctor before he came home.

"It's not normal. He talks like an old man, and it's not comfortable living in the same house with him. He'll be dead before he's six."

"Frank!"

Father was not at all happy. Whenever he became upset he talked with a brogue and waxed poetic. "If I'd known what was coming that dark March night, I'd have stuffed him back into the 'caul' and returned him."

When Father got home that night he and Mother decided that the best thing to do was to send me to Sunday school. So the next week I went with my sister Ella.

"Let the boy worry Father Hogan for a while," Father told Mother. "I pay my pew-rent regularly and hardly ever use it. Let him earn the money."

Sunday school opened up a whole new world of material for me. It gave me an abundance of new questions to ask my father. I think I must have known instinctively how terribly skittish it made him, especially after the morning he drove the family car into the oak tree in the yard. As he was coming out of the garage I called out to him:

"I thought I saw God on the front seat with you."

Father sent me to bed early that night, then he took refuge with Mother. "We've got to do something about this morbid interest. It's upsetting."

Ella chimed in. "If you think he's upsetting now, wait until next week when Father Hogan tells us about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Then he'll really be creepy!"

This was too much for Father. He withdrew me from Sunday school as of that night. It was just as well, for the church and I were soon to clash. It happened shortly after I entered the third grade. It was the week I promised Margie Kelly that I would bring the stork to the church picnic.

--

John Taylor

email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/

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